People who influence the queen
Horse sense common trait of close friends
As Queen Elizabeth celebrates her Diamond Jubilee this weekend, her devoted Prince Philip will be at her side. The Duke of Edinburgh is one of many people who have played key roles in the Queen’s long life. From her devoted nanny and favourite prime minister to her loving husband, here are 10 people have helped define the Queen’s character:
Sir Winston Churchill
The Queen’s first British prime minister (of 12) was sunk in gloom at the death of George VI and did not relish working with a girl he hardly knew. “She is but a child,” he said. But the old man was soon captivated by the new Queen’s youth, beauty and precocious authority — and impressed by how much she knew. “All the film people in the world,” he said, “if they had scoured the globe, could not have found anyone so suited for the part.”
To her, he was Britain’s wartime saviour and hero. “She enjoyed his reminiscences and jokes,” wrote Nigel Nicolson in The Queen and Us, “and he her youthful response. He was fun, the embodiment of everything that made Great Britain great; she was his old-age romance.” At his weekly audiences with her, they would sit together alone for up to an hour. When Churchill was asked what they talked about, he bluffed: “Oh, mostly racing.”
King George VI
Deeply shy and aghast to find himself king, George VI was torn between wanting to shelter his eldest daughter from the realities of what lay ahead and preparing her for the succession. He tried to protect “us four,” the cosy family unit thrust into the public arena by an accident of history. She adored him and he was her example, his diligence and commitment to duty providing her with a lifelong template of monarchy. It was said that the war and Churchill “made a king of him” but Elizabeth knew at what cost.
He introduced her, aged 16, to the recreational passion of her life by taking her to watch his racehorses in training at the Beckhampton stables of Fred Darling. By the time she inherited the royal racing stables in 1952, she was leagues ahead of him in equine knowledge and enthusiasm. His legacy provided one of the deepest diversionary satisfactions of her reign: an arena where she could be herself and excel as a professional among equals.
Martin Charteris
Lord Charteris of Amisfield was a one-off; a shrewd, high-spirited and innovative courtier who served the Queen as her private secretary for three decades, injecting humour into her speeches and a lightness of touch into the daily round. “There was this really pretty woman,” he recalled of his first interview with her, “bright blue eyes, blue dress, brooch with huge sapphires. She was so young, beautiful, dutiful, the most impressive of women.”
He was with Elizabeth and Prince Philip in Kenya when the king died unexpectedly on Feb. 6, 1952. Her calm and composure were astonishing to him. “I never imagined that anyone could grasp their destiny with such safe hands.” It fell to him to ask what name she wanted to use as Queen — “My own name, of course. Elizabeth” — and to brief her on details of the accession on the long journey home.
Charteris, a snuff-taker, sculptor and late convert to wildfowling, was proud of relaxing the Queen’s image. “He made being Queen fun,” says Robert Lacey, the royal biographer. He wanted people to see her as she really was, not straitjacketed by formality. Letting the light in on the mystery of royalty, he argued as the groundbreaking documentary
Royal Family was televised in 1969, was both pragmatic and inevitable. The highly successful Silver Jubilee in 1977 was his parting triumph.
On his retirement, the Queen presented him with a silver tray engraved with the words: “Martin, thank you for a lifetime.” He was provost of Eton, his old school, for the next 13 years, remaining close to the Queen until his death in 1999.
Henry Carnarvon
The 7th Earl of Carnarvon was the Queen’s racing manager, one of her oldest and most valued friends. She called him by his schoolboy nickname “Porchey” (after his courtesy title, Lord Porchester). He took her to balls. He was with the princesses when they joined the wild throng of V-E Day revellers outside Buckingham Palace. Lord Porchester (as he then was) revived the Highclere Stud at the family seat near Newbury, where the Queen was a frequent guest. They discussed everything from breeding theories to rhododendrons. “It was a very equal friendship ranging over many interests,” says his son, Geordie, the current earl. “They were from the same generation. They had been through the war. They shared a great love of the countryside and wildlife as well as horses. Whether they were walking at Sandringham, Highclere or in Scotland, it was always a great obsession.
“My father had a photographic memory for bloodlines. He and the Queen had a similar passion for every aspect and detail of breeding. They often had quite lively discussions about which stallion a mare should go to, or which race. It was a key part of their week.”
Carnarvon, who bred a string of high-class winners, was the Queen’s racing manager for 32 years until his sudden death in 2001. She broke with custom and attended his funeral.
John Warren
The first person without title or military rank to be the Queen’s racing adviser and bloodstock manager. Straighttalking son of a greengrocer and entirely self-made, he is now part of the racing aristocracy. He is the Queen’s eyes and ears when she cannot be in the field and talks to her most days, but is the first to admit that he defers to her formidable knowledge of breeding and bloodlines. “It is a daily passion for her when she’s not caught up with everything else,” he says. “She loves the breeding of horses, which is such an inexact science. You cannot fit all the pieces of the jigsaw together to give you an answer. The Queen finds that totally intriguing. If it was easy, I don’t think it would be interesting to her. It is an intellectual challenge.
“Her interest is in producing an animal that finds its ultimate niche. The pleasure is in getting everything right — matching the jockey to the horse, the horse to the trainer, deciding which ground, which distance. It’s like a game of backgammon. That’s why the lady is unique.” Julian Muscat, author of Her
Majesty’s Pleasure about the Queen’s passion for horses, points out that in Porchey’s day, the Queen had separate bloodstock and racing managers. “Now, in Warren, the two roles are one, which demonstrates how absolute his authority is.” He says the Queen’s real joy is watching her youngsters grow. She visits them, camera in hand, and has built up a huge library of pictures of their development and characteristics. “She is as knowledgeable as anybody. What she knows is in a class apart.”
Warren is long-married to Lord Porchester’s daughter, Carolyn. They run the Highclere Stud with Carolyn’s brother, Harry Herbert. When the Queen stays with the couple at their manor house on the Highclere estate, it means she can also catch up with her old friend, Jeanie, the American-born Dowager Countess of Carnarvon.
Marion “Crawfie ” Crawford
Nursery maid and imaginative governess to the two princesses for 16 years, Crawfie was ultimately ostracized for her treachery in writing the first insider’s account of royal service. Before the betrayal, she had been a much-loved member of the household. “My dear child. You can’t leave them!” protested Queen Mary when Crawfie announced inconvenient plans to marry. The princesses were almost adults. On her wedding in 1947, she was showered with royal gifts and given a grace-and-favour residence with roses around the door at Kensington Palace. Two years later, her illuminating but inoffensive memoir,
The Little Princesses, brought social ruin. “She sneaked,” said Princess Margaret. There were no flowers from the little princesses at her funeral in 1988.
Margaret “Bobo” MacDonald
A sensible, forthright Scottish countrywoman who served her “little lady” for 67 years, moving from nursery maid to dresser to confidante. Throughout the princess’s girlhood she shared a bedroom with her and was her closest link with the real world. She was with her at Sangana Hunting Lodge when Elizabeth became Queen and with her, too, in Malta as an “ordinary” naval officer’s wife. To some, she seemed suffocatingly protective of her mistress, especially after the princess’s marriage. After her retirement, she retained her own suite at Buckingham Palace and when her health failed, the Queen hired nurses to look after her until she died, aged 89, in 1993.
Angela Kelly
A jolly and very conspicuous member of the royal entourage, known to insiders as the Queen’s “gatekeeper.” The successor to Bobo MacDonald is officially Personal Assistant, Adviser and Curator (Jewellery, Insignias and Wardrobe), a much grander remit. Both are grandmothers, both rigorous professionals, and they enjoy talking about grandchildren, clothes, jewelry and makeup as much as the diplomatic impact or appropriateness of the Queen’s outfits. When they are alone, staff hear laughter echoing the corridor. Kelly has brought inventiveness and interest to the royal wardrobe: an evening gown thoughtfully embroidered with scarlet ibis for Trinidad and Tobago; maple leaves for Canada; that nearly emerald green coat and dress for the Queen’s epochmaking visit to Ireland. They look at the wardrobe together and try to come up with ideas that will send out a message.
She travels with the Queen everywhere and lives in a grace-and-favour house in Windsor. “The Queen loves clothes and is a real expert on fabrics,” Kelly said in a rare interview. “It has not been a question of me teaching the Queen. It has been the other way round. I don’t know why she seems fond of me because I don’t give her an easy time! I do think she values my opinion but she … always makes the final decision.”
Patrick Plunket
A childhood friend who became one of the Queen’s closest advisers. Easygoing, humorous, wise and only three years older than the Queen, the 7th Baron Plunket was sometimes called the brother she never had. He was George VI’s equerry and then the Queen’s Master of the Household. His sense of the absurd appealed to her — his account of finding a sticky bun containing a set of dentures after a garden party convulsed them both. He loved parties and gave zest to any formal occasion. “Better than anyone else, Philip included,” says Robert Lacey, “Plunket knew how to handle Elizabeth, coaxing her gently out of her obstinacies.” Devastated when he died of cancer in 1975, aged only 51, she had a little pavilion built in his memory in Windsor Great Park.
Duke of Edinburgh
The unsung hero of the reign. Despite Philip Mountbatten’s dashing image and fine war record, their union was controversial at the time and he put up with many slights during their early married life. Established courtiers (“the men with moustaches,” his staff called them) patronized him and he was deeply hurt not to be allowed to give his children his family name. He had to abandon a flourishing naval career and become, essentially, an accessory.
His readiness to take risks and his outspokenness have been a perfect foil for her cautious nature. He challenges where she cannot. She defers to him on most family matters. After several turbulent years dealing with the marital problems of their children, they appear to have settled companionably into a cloud-free old age.
“He is someone who does not take easily to compliments,” the Queen said in her Golden Wedding speech in 1997, “but he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years. I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a greater debt than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.”